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Jury begins deliberations

By Pierrette J. Shields Longmont Times-Call

Posted:
01/31/2013 04:43:55 PM MST

Updated:
01/31/2013 04:45:08 PM MST

BOULDER -- Prosecutor Ryan Brackley told a Boulder County jury on Thursday that Kyle Brooks has spent the past 14 months trying to manipulate the 20-year-old woman he is accused of assaulting while she was pregnant.

By all accounts, he said, it worked.

She testified during Kyle Brooks' trial this week that he never laid hands on her and that she had made up the assault when she spoke to police. She even denied that she gave police many of the details that officers included in reports about the Nov. 15, 2011, incident.

Kyle Brooks

"It is a sad case and it is a tragic case," Brackley said during closing arguments in Boulder District Court on Thursday.According to police and prosecutors, Brooks -- angry that his girlfriend Shelby Laning got pregnant by another man while they were separated -- strangled her and pinned her to a bed and pressed his knee into her abdomen on Nov. 15, 2011, demanding that she abort. They report that he then fought with officers later in the day at the Boulder County Courthouse in Longmont where police met him to arrest him on suspicion of the earlier assault. During the fight with officers, police reported, Brooks tried to take one officer's gun and grabbed a Taser that had fallen on the ground and tried to shoot an officer with it.

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The Taser did not deploy.

He is on trial on trial on two felony counts of attempting to disarm a police officer, eight bail-bond violations and a felony count of second-degree assault. He is also charged with two counts of tampering with a witness because of the letters and calls.

Once arrested, prosecutors said, Brooks embarked on a 14-month campaign to manipulate Laning, urging her to recant her story on the assault and even writing letters that he wanted her to rewrite in her own handwriting claiming she made up the story. One of the letters, intercepted by officials, included a model letter for her to rewrite to him in which she apologizes and claims to have made up the story told to police.

Prosecutor Fred Johnson said Laning told the truth to police right after the incident.

"Before those tears even dried on Ms. Laning's face, she told the truth," he said. "She didn't just tell the police officer on scene. Shelby Laning at the same time told her mother on the car ride to the hospital. Shelby Laning didn't just tell her mother, she told her doctor in privacy."

And the doctor testified that her pain and injuries that day matched the tale she told, then, Johnson said.

Prosecutors replayed phone calls Brooks made from the jail in which he talked about "playing" Laning to benefit his case and called her names like "b----h," "whore," "ho," and said he had no intention of being when her when he got out of jail.

"I think generally people understand domestic violence, but rarely is it spelled out like this," Johnson said.Laning left the courtroom after the prosecution finished its arguments and did not return. Brooks' family remained.

Defense attorney Nancy Salomone said Brooks is clearly guilty of some of the charges he faces, but that he did not try to disarm a police officer and said jurors would not find that prosecutors proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Brooks used his hands as a deadly weapon against Laning.

She noted that none of the officers in the fray with Brooks at the courthouse on Nov. 15, 2011, actually saw Brooks yank on Officer Bruce Pettitt's holster and rip it from his belt. Pettitt testified he felt the yank at his gun while he was trying with another officer to control a fighting Brooks. He said he could see the other officer's hands, but not Brooks' and then he saw that the gun had fallen loose.

At that point he dropped his Taser to try to recover the still-holstered gun and shortly there after heard the clicking sound of the Taser and saw Brooks had retrieved it, pointed it had him, and pulled the trigger.

"One bottom line fact, no one saw his hands on the gun. No one saw his hands near the duty belt at any point," Salomone said.

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